Discover the story of English

More than 600,000 words, over a thousand years

Welcome to OED Online. If you or your library subscribes, dive straight in to the riches of the English language. If not, click on the images below to learn more about the OED, see What's new, or take a look at Aspects of English, our language feature section.

Celebrate the OED's 90th birthday with us!

Free schools access

To celebrate, we are pleased to offer free access to the OED for any UK state schools and US and Canadian public K-12 schools who are not current subscribers for the duration of the 2018/19 academic year. Find out more here >

Youth words

Can you help us to record the words, phrases, and expressions used by children and young people? Submit your word >

Latest update

What's new: More than 600 new words, senses, and subentries have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in our latest update, including TGIF, burkini, and Dylanesque. Find out more >

New article: This update sees several words of South African origin being added to the OED. Read more >

The 2019 OED Internship

We are pleased to announce that we will be running a paid summer internship programme in the summer of 2019, with positions available in our General Editorial team and Science Editorial team. Find out more and apply here>